More Antibiotics

The last few days Madeleine has been successful in keeping her fever away. Once she spiked that last fever the docs put her on two very general antibiotics that are heavy hitters to basically knock out anything that could be causing the fevers as a precaution, and then as the samples get sent in and the tests come back, they adjust the medications to treat exactly what the tests reveal.

This morning we saw a small little jump in her white count and her blood cultures continue to come back negative (basically the blood they drew when she had the fever is put into petrie dishes and they wait to see what if anything grows for bacteria, etc so they can treat it). They will watch the cultures and clear her if they come back negative for 5 days. Her stool samples however came back this afternoon positive for C. diff, a bacteria that causes diarrhea and is not uncommon for chemotherapy patients but is less common for babies. Anyone with an infant knows that babies poop all the time, sometimes, skip a day... it's all normal and individual. It's very likely that Madeleine initially got her fever as her stem cells were doing what they were supposed to do in regenerating her immune system, and that the blanket antibiotics she was given to safeguard her from a potentially worse infection is the actual cause of the C.diff - greaaaaaaaaaaat. =( So now she will be on a medication to treat the C.diff for at least 10 days. This diagnosis potentially explains her shortened feedings and how she was arching her back at times when feeding - she is likely having some pain in her belly from the diarrhea. All manageable symptoms though, I assure you. 

She has moments of discomfort but overall she's still happy, still playing, still sitting up, etc. The C.diff also will not prevent her from going home either because we can easily take the medication home. So tomorrow we'll talk to the docs about the going home plan: she still needs the monthly kidney and hearing tests scheduled and completed before she can be discharged so hopefully they can get those done between Wednesday and Friday. What a great Mother's Day gift to be home with both of my kids.